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Molecular Gastronomy, The Science of Cooking
Roland Piquepaille writes "The Art of Cooking is evolving fast in this 21st century. New food products are being designed with the help of molecular technology, genetic discoveries or space research before arriving in our kitchens. For example, here is a Pravda article which says that NASA is preparing sandwiches which will still be edible after seven years. Companies like Kraft are also using nanotechnology to create food products tailored to users' needs. This is a booming market and, according to Associated Press, dozens of universities in the U.S. are offering degrees in culinology, attracting creative students in their food and science programs."
This is good because eventually we will all want to have food that is chemically efficient for us to digest, without any of the wrong ingredients, but I question the health side of chemical/altered foods.
I was talking to a chef about a month ago who was complaining about having to put loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo in foods to achieve the taste that the consumer wants, at the expense of their health. "We're paid to kill people," was his complaint, and sadly I think he's right. This same chef was saying how it would be nice if there were alternatives to bad food, that would not jeopardize someone's health. I think that new advancements in science would be the right approach to solving the obesity problem, as long as people are protected from any negative side effects. Natural replacements seem to top this chef's list. He said that the natural foods are the very best for you, so he had little faith in chemicals or engineered food as being healthy for us.
I've stayed away from garbage food for only a short period and lost nearly 40 pounds of flubber! It's really simple, actually. Most people have a small breakfast, a bigger lunch and a huge dinner. I have a huge breakfast, a smaller lunch and a much smaller dinner (before 6pm usually). I eat from each of the four food groups every day.
This one cool salad the chef told me about is:
- Veggies (whatever you want)
- Salt & Pepper (loads of it unless you have a heart condition)
- Squeezed Lemon
The salad tastes like fish & chips with vinegar and salt, so I'm kinda tricking my body into thinking it is getting a load of grease (which all of our bodies crave, because they are stupid bags of carbon and mostly water -- and we all know how well oil and water gets along, don't we?).I stay away from oils because they can ruin your whole system, and I think they reinforce our current fatty deposits, by feeding it somehow (it's not that much of a mystery). Once a week I have fat with meat, because the chef said that new fat kills old fat. New fat apparently replaces old fat, and then doesn't congreal as quickly if it's in turn replaced a week later. That doesn't mean overdo it... just a little will do. Apparently people who have been overweight for a long time have very dense fat that must be replaced in order for them to empty fatty deposits eventually.
My portions are smaller, and I'm not always hungry. I drink as much water as I can every day too, and it helps. I drink tea & coffee, and smoke regularly. I might not be the picture of health, but I am trying.
Now if we could only get some fat and tar eating nanoprobes... then we'd really be in business.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Does this mean we might actually get some good new spices, once they start playing around with modifying existing ones somewhat gastronomically scientifically?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Hah! I can make sandwiches that are edible RIGHT NOW!
I better put that in my resume... brb.
Be careful eating old sandwiches. Homer tried that once and got so sick he couldn't go to Duff Gardens.
I'm a big tall mofo.
NASA is preparing sandwiches which will still be inedible after seven years. And they borrowed this technology from my local high school. They should coat the shuttle with these monstrosities.
Good for seven years? Does that mean the developed a twinkie sandwich?
You can't "solve" the world's food problem. You give humanity more food, you get more humans. And these supplementary humans need more food.
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this is obviously based on failed experiments by the airlines.
Seriously.
I wouldn't call what Kraft & Co are spitting out 'cooking'.
It is a designer meal replacement that resembles cooked food.
Maybe I am old fashined, but anything that gets made in huge vats by machines and then packaged in plastic may be something that keeps me alive, but it DEFINETLY is not cooked.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
In Futurama, Fry eats one of these sandwiches ..
I suppose this is were the nanotechnology comes into play..
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
The world has done very well without scientists mucking up our food sources. How many thousands of years have people lived off what the earth grows?
I now see in my grocery store "organic milk", it is priced twice as expensive as the gallon of regular milk. The same thing is in produce, they have organic vegitables. What is this? 20 years ago everything was organic, now only the rich can get normal food. The rest of us must eat crap that has been genetically modified.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Roland Piquepaille with Herbed Tomato Sauce
INGREDIENTS:
250 pounds Roland Piquepaille
1 cup article excerpts
1/8 teaspoon finely chopped original contributions.
1 primidi.com blog
1 popular techie website
PREPARATION:
Wash Roland Piquepaille; pat dry. Season with 1 cup copy pasted excerpts from article. Mix in 1/8th teaspoon finely chopped original comments. Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a large skillet or Dutch oven and cook until evenly brown. Link to blog and submit to popular techie website.
Best served hot. Serves ~90,000.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
For example, here is a Pravda article which says that NASA is preparing sandwiches which will still be edible after seven years.
In around mid 1998, I cleaned my car out and found, among the other rubbish in the back seat, an obviously forgotten McDonalds paper bag, one either me or one of my passengers had bought & forgotten about. It contained a Quarter Pounder and Fries that had been sitting there, dried out for who knows how long. I honestly couldn't remember the last time I'd been to McDonalds when i was doing the cleaning, so I'm guessing it had been there at least six months to a year.
The fries looked OK. they'd been kept inside the bag & never exposed to the air so no bugs had managed to crawl in. The real surprise was the quarter pounder - I unwrapped it and found a perfectly preserved edible looking and smelling burger. To look at and sniff, it was no different to a brand new fresh one, it was just rock hard and dried out.
I gave it to my niece who kicked it around for a couple of days in the back yard - it didn't look much worse for wear after that either.
Judging by the condition of that quarter pounder, I wouldn't be surprised if it would have lasted through to today if I'd kept it in the bag.
I was talking to a chef about a month ago who was complaining about having to put loads of oils, creams, butter and mayo in foods to achieve the taste that the consumer wants, at the expense of their health. "We're paid to kill people," was his complaint, and sadly I think he's right.
What a rediculous statement. It's fine to eat something unhealthy every once in awhile as long as you don't make a habit of it. Eating well 28 days a month will render whatever you do the remaining 2 or 3 days pretty much irrelevant. Avoiding being stabbed 28 days won't help you to much if you are getting stabbed 2 or 3 days a month.
If your buddy really felt that he was getting paid to kill people, he would quit so obviously he himself realizes his statement is rediculous.
This same chef was saying how it would be nice if there were alternatives to bad food, that would not jeopardize someone's health.
There are. They are called vegetables. Again, you eat plenty of vegies and you can get away with eating all sorts of nasty stuff occasionally.
Your theories on fat murdering other fat are interesting to say the least. You might want to pick up a copy of Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill by Udo Erasmus for a slightly more scientific explanation of how fats operate inside your body.
When I go out to eat, I don't worry about how healthy the food is and my cholesterol numbers kick holy ass. How do I do it? Because I don't go out to eat very much and when I eat at home I'm very, very healthy. There's no need for genetically engineered superfoods. Just eat right 95% of the time and live a little the reminaing 5%.
GMD
watch this
The head chef of the Fat Duck (a British restaurant voted the best in the world this year - jokes about British cuisine now null and void), Heston Blumenthal, is what you might call a 'molecular gastronomist'. By breaking cooking down to the basical levels and using the principles of chemistry to determine good combinations of food one can offer up delights such as bacon 'n' egg ice cream and snail porridge; two of the most famous dishes served at the Fat Duck.
I read a fascinating article on Blumenthal in The Sunday Times a good few months ago, and also learned of another restaurant (the name and location of which escapes me, although I think it was in Spain) which offered up similar food. The menu for this particular restaurant was something like 17 courses and several hundred euros a head. The writer for the ST (who was lucky to beat a three-odd year waiting list) was amazed at the combinations of ingredients and even the consistencies of the dishes that were comepletely unexpected. One particular serving that stuck in my mind was a kind of 'orange froth' that practically disappeared immediately in your mouth but was full of flavour. The journalist detailed how strange it felt eating froth for dinner. The cover of the supplement I was reading featured pictures from a handful of the courses and the presentation was astonishing. There was a square chocolate lollipop (I forget what wacky ingredient was coupled with it) which was so thin in the middle it was all wispy and translucent and webbed. Delicious.
Anyone for baconated grapefruit?
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
disclaimer- My wife's a chef at a 5-diamond restaurent and she spices her food appropriately and everything rocks. I think that us americans over spice and generally go crazy with trying to add too much flavor. Lighten up a bit on the spice ( here comes the "lips acquire stains" jokes) and try detecting subtle flavors or better combinations.
I don't know why people insist on nuking foods with cayenne or pouring texas pete on everything.
-B
I worked at a convenience store when I was younger - on one of the shelves we discovered a twinkee that was 6 years old. Still wrapped in plastic, the thing was as hard as a rock (literally.)
We threw it as hard as we could at the arborite countertop. The arborite chipped, but the twinkee was unscathed.
We hit it with a hammer. Repeatedly. It wouldn't break.
We debated selling them to the military as a new armor-piercing shell.